Inaugural poet in S.A. for readings

Richard Blanco reads some of his works at St. Mary's University on Wednesday April 3, 2013. Blanco, is the first immigrant and openly gay poet to read at a presidential inauguration.

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The 2013 version of OLLU’s Literary Festival opens Tuesday evening with a reading by visiting writer Richard Blanco.

Back in January, Richard Blanco's poem at President Barack Obama's inauguration captivated throngs on the Washington Mall and television viewers worldwide.

“One Today” had the same impact Wednesday, among a half-dozen works the poet read to about 30 people in a St. Mary's University classroom.

They responded with laughs, applause and quiet murmurs of approval. “My mother and I cried watching on TV,” a young woman told him of the inaugural poem.

Blanco, who was in San Antonio for Our Lady of the Lake University's Literary Festival, described the Washington event as emotion-filled, akin to “a citizenship oath,” explaining, “There was a part of me that was not American.”

The poet, who is gay, married and lives in Maine, described himself as “made in Cuba, assembled in Spain and imported to the United States,” all in the first 45 days of his life. He grew up in Miami and is an engineer.

When the president shook his hand and whispered something in his ear like, “You look great,” Blanco said it might as well have been, “Here's your country.”

The White House assignment (he had to submit three poems) led Blanco on a creative, soul-searching journey.

“There's that pressure to say Spanish was the first European language spoken in the United States. Take that,” he said, but he resisted writing a political poem.

Blanco opted to punctuate “One Today” with Spanish pronunciations of words such as “Sierras” and “Colorado.”

The poem mentioned his parents, but his mother was a frequent figure in his other readings here. “I should give her royalties,” he said.

Though openly gay for some time, Blanco didn't come out in his poetry until his second book. He received big laughs for a poem about his “homophobic grandmother,” who assigned gayness to Play-Doh, Fruit Loops, drinking from a straw and taking bubble baths.

G.I. Joe figures were suspect because, she said, they were ultimately dolls.

“In a weird way, she pushed me into being a writer. She made me into an introvert and an observer, which is what writers do,” Blanco said.

A new book will be out in May that will contain his inaugural poems, their Spanish translations and a “mini-memoir.”

Since January, he has been approached by composers about writing lyrics but said his dream collaboration would be with singer-songwriter James Taylor, whom he met at the inauguration.

Blanco has been in a daze since the event, but the upside has been becoming “an ambassador of poetry.”

“It still feels like something somebody else did,” he said.

This article originally published the incorrect first name of Richard Blanco.